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Dinosaurs, Lost Civilizations, and the Erasure of Central African Culture

3/21/2019

16 Comments

 
​Instead of writing a lengthy blog post today, I’d like to recommend that you read “Hunting Dinosaurs in Central Africa,” an excellent article in Contingent Magazine by Edward Guimont discussing the close connection between pseudohistory, cryptozoology, and colonialism in Central Africa from early colonial era down to the present. Guimont discusses how Europeans attempted to assert control over Africa by rewriting its history through a Biblical lens but also through appropriating control over its animals. As Guimont explains, such seemingly disparate phenomena as hunting for King Solomon’s mines, looking for dinosaurs in the Congo, and displaying African wildlife in European capitals were actually part of a single colonial enterprise to delegitimize African cultures and knowledge and assert European dominance. To this end, the entire language of “discovery” and “exploration” inherently referred to European penetration of lands viewed as inherently wild and primitive, whose inferior peoples were ignorant and whose presence and knowledge were unacknowledged and unvalued. 
Picture
A Victorian reconstruction of two dinosaurs fighting.
One of the most interesting parts of Guimont’s article is his thematic connection between the Eurocentric search for living dinosaurs in Africa and David Icke’s Reptilians. Guimont notes that the hunt for African dinosaurs can’t be severed from pan-Babylonist musings about whether the people of Babylon depicted a brontosaurus from the Congo on the Ishtar Gate in the form of a sirrush, or dragon, and the claim that these dinosaur-dragons are also the dragon of the Book of Daniel, thus making the Congolese “dinosaur” evidence of Biblical truth. In the twentieth century, some speculated that the Babylonians had traveled to Africa and saw dinosaurs, helping to fuel creationist beliefs and hyperdiffusionism in one stroke.
The persistent Euro-American belief in the existence of dinosaurs in Africa–often without evidence–always served a colonial purpose. These atavistic monsters symbolize the continent and its people in the minds of those in Europe and the United States who oppose full independence of African nations and equality for their citizens. But more recently, another reptilian creature inhabits the conspiratorial right’s menagerie, combining the revisionist history of Ley’s sirrush link to Central Africa, racist stereotypes, and the thinly-veiled colonialist concept of ancient aliens, to create a reptilian being capable of ruling Europe and the United States, if only covertly: Lizard People.
​The connection isn’t just in the promotion of reptiles (as dinosaurs were wrongly thought to be in the past), but in the fact that the Lizard People of David Icke are mixed up with Icke’s use of Zecharia Sitchin’s ancient astronaut claims, themselves included arguments that King Solomon’s mines, which Sitchin placed in Africa, were ancient alien gold-hunting operations. To Guimont’s analysis I might add this: The Reptilians take their inspiration from the Brotherhood of the Serpent (or the Brotherhood of the Snake), popularized by Theosophy and its offshoots (from Christian fantasies about global Devil-worshiping serpent cults), which are closely tied to colonialist and imperialist ideas. These serpents were the serpent of wisdom of pagan lore, an inversion of the Biblical Serpent of Eden, and they add an extra layer of complication to the hunt for dinosaurs in the twentieth century. They weren’t just atavistic monster but also a hidden source of forgotten knowledge, embodying the tension in Euro-American colonialism between seeing indigenous people as racially inferior but also as preserving pure ancient wisdom in their primitive simplicity.
 
Anyway, be sure to read Guimont’s piece. It’s a great read.
16 Comments
Hanslune
3/21/2019 10:52:15 am

An interesting read but perhaps a bit of a stretch.

Reply
Graham
3/22/2019 08:25:57 am

I agree it's an interesting read, but I've noticed an increasingly conspiratorial tone in articles like this of late and I am beginning to worry just where the road will end.

Collective racial guilt was used to 'justify' slavery (Punishment for the crime of Ham.) and pogroms (Up to and including the Holocaust) (Punishment for rejecting Jesus.)

Reply
Mandalore
3/21/2019 01:34:22 pm

In your last paragraph first sentence I think you mean that "promotion of *lizards* (as dinosaurs were wrongly thought to be in the past)". Dinosaurs were reptiles.

Reply
Machala
3/21/2019 02:38:49 pm

I found the following interesting factoid which agrees with you but is bound to drive some people nuts...

"We’ve found that in order to answer the question ‘are dinosaurs reptiles’, we have to know exactly what a reptile is.

We’ve found that, according to traditional classification methods, although dinosaurs were endotherms, they exhibited enough reptilian characteristics to be considered reptiles.

Using more modern classification techniques, we’ve also found out that not only are dinosaurs reptiles, but birds are too.

Not only that, but birds can also be considered to be dinosaurs, as they share a common ancestor with dinosaurs!

Therefore dinosaurs are still alive! "

______from: https://www.activewild.com/are-dinosaurs-reptiles/

Reply
Finn
4/5/2019 02:29:11 am

When it all comes down to it, every reptile, bird and mammal is just a really mobile fish.

Mandalore
3/21/2019 03:18:30 pm

I agree, it's all kinds of weird. The synapsids are likewise strange in terms of being kind of mammals but also not.

Reply
Accumulated Wisdom
3/21/2019 05:49:43 pm

A couple of my Teachers swore up, and down, "Dinosaurs were giant Chickens and Dogs". Neither one, ever cited a source.

In my early youth, there were claims of living Dinosaurs, and Giant Sloth being found in South America.

Dr. Who was my first introduction to the idea of "Lizard People". The next was the original Battle Star Galactica. The Appolo character explains, the Cylons were a race of Lizard People. Their robots are all that is left. Nothing more until, my buddy showed me a book titled, "Apocalypse Culture" and a specific quote. "After snorting a line of cocaine, George Bush shapeshifted into a Lizard"...or something to that effect. We were laughing so hard, I don't recall exactness. After receiving a gift card for a bookstore, I wasted it on David Icke. Threw it in the trash after reading. I effectively had Tourettes during the read as many times as, I cried out BS!!!

I haven't heard anything about "Shadow People" for a long time. Maybe they'll make a comeback next.

Reply
David Evans
3/21/2019 08:00:55 pm

I think the article, though informative, claims too much.

A true racist would assume that the inferior, ignorant natives were simply relating myths or misdescribing known animals. Instead Hagenbeck believed that they were describing a real large animal, not officially known to exist. It is not surprising that he thought it might be a dinosaur.

Also I never read Heuvelmans as believing that the Babylonians colonized central Africa. At most he thought that they might have explored and seen or brought back a specimen.

Reply
PWR
3/22/2019 07:00:01 am

Racism has many forms, and isn't always as simple as assuming the "natives" to be ignorant.

The concept of dinosaurs in Africa fit with the Victorian (and to many, sadly still current) perception of Africa as a primitive, wild land - that it could contain prehistoric monsters would fit with their idea of the African people themselves as being somehow less developed than Europeans.

That they would also effectively use Africa as a blank slate on which to project their own pet theories, hang-ups, and rationalising of Biblical stories, rather than engaging with/studying the culture of Africa in its own right is another manifestation of that racism.

Reply
David Evans
3/22/2019 12:21:13 pm

I often go to Loch Ness in the hope of seeing whatever lives there. Does that make me a racist? Would it do so if I went to an Irish or an African lake in the same hope?
If mokele-mbembe is a living animal it is not "prehistoric", any more than the coelacanth. If cryptozoologists look in out-of-the-way places it's because animals unknown to Western science are more likely to be found there. Not out of racism.

William Fitzgerald
3/22/2019 06:00:56 am

The main points of the article are: 1. belief and search of dinosaurs and other exotic creatures is a form of colonialism; 2. Europeans deny agency of Africans by claiming that only Europeans could discover. 3.Look at all the stupid Americans believing in lizard people.

The first point is a stretch. I am not denying that Europeans may have incorporated these beliefs in justifying colonialism, but in the scheme of things it was a minor and flimsy aspect of colonialism.

The second is encapsulated in the following quote: "The existence—or non-existence—of creatures in Africa could only be proven through European “discovery.” Indigenous knowledge could only demonstrate possibility, not actuality." The problem here, is that the European point of view is not wrong-not completely right either- but not wrong. How do you classify a scientific discovery? Or put it another way, some Africans may have known of a creature, but it was unknown to science or the wider-world. Europeans brought the creature into history and into science; so discovery is an apt enough word.

"The persistent Euro-American belief in the existence of dinosaurs in Africa–often without evidence–always served a colonial purpose." Not proved. Dishonest and disproportional to lump Americans in with European colonialists in Africa.

Ending with: "The theory of the Lizard People is sustained by a long chain of connections stretching back centuries, beginning with the same associations between Great Zimbabwe, King Solomon, and Babylon that sustained twentieth-century theories of living dinosaurs." If this was what he was building up to and his big reveal, then pretty tepid stuff.

What I am left with: 1. That people believe in "lizard people" and all the other fringe stuff is disconcerting and troubling and I applaud Jason and others in their fight. 2. That many of these beliefs stem from racism, is true and should be pointed out. 3. But, not everything is racism per se, and trying to make it so only undermines when it actually is.

Reply
PWR
3/22/2019 07:02:08 am

"How do you classify a scientific discovery? Or put it another way, some Africans may have known of a creature, but it was unknown to science or the wider-world. Europeans brought the creature into history and into science; so discovery is an apt enough word."



Only because this concept of science and history is in itself colonialist. There was no effort to corroborate or support the account of the Africans who were already aware of this creature, instead, it was only legitimised when "discovered" by a European.

Reply
William Fitzgerald
3/22/2019 09:38:21 am

If you are talking about lack of education and access, then fine. I am not denying the racism. But, science and history are not a colonial constructs or concepts. Can these fields be tainted by racism, sure, but your idea: "Only because this concept of science and history is in itself colonialist." is patently wrong.

"There was no effort to corroborate or support the account of the Africans who were already aware of this creature, instead, it was only legitimised when "discovered" by a European." Credit should have been given, granted, but to deny that Europeans established the existence of animals to the wider world, that was previously outside of a relatively small number of people who were aware, is de-legitimizing.

PWR
3/22/2019 10:43:27 am

The notion that something has not been "discovered" or is not "known to science" until it has been recorded by a European, regardless of existing knowledge among other cultures, is inherently colonialist. Whether that's knowledge of "undiscovered" animals, or history, or of anything else.

An anti-colonialist approach would have been to publicise, or to use a modern term "signal boost", the existing knowledge of indigenous peoples.

So much of the sense of "darkest Africa" (the sort of place where you might find a dinosaur!) is due to white Europeans' insistence that they can write the book on Africa, at the expense of African voices.

The notion of something being "undiscovered" when it's been known to hundreds or thousands of people for years is absurd, and for colonising powers to take credit for "discovering" something already known is dictionary definition colonialism.

Machala
3/22/2019 12:00:26 pm

The belief in the Mokèlé-mbèmbé, a cryptozoological sauropod-like creature inhabiting the Congo River basin, predates the colonial invasion, and continues among the native people living there to this day - it was not "discovered" or "invented" by white explorers.

William Fitzgerald
3/22/2019 11:06:54 pm

BTW, I love the dinosaur pictures. Reminds of the art from the book: "Where the Wild Things Are."

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